The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

The Road to Little Dribbling

by Bill Bryson

In 1995, Iowa native Bill Bryson took a motoring trip around Britain to explore that green and pleasant land. The uproarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, is one of the most acute portrayals of the United Kingdom ever written. Two decades later, Bryson—now a British citizen—set out again to rediscover his adopted country. In these pages, he follows a straight line through the island—from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath—and shows us every pub, stone village, and human foible along the way.

Whether he is dodging cow attacks in Torcross, getting lost in the H&M on Kensington High Street, or—more seriously—contemplating the future of the nation’s natural wonders in the face of aggressive development, Bryson guides us through the old and the new with vivid detail and laugh-out-loud humor. Irreverent, endearing, and always hilarious, The Road to Little Dribbling is filled with Bill Bryson’s deep knowledge and love of his chosen home.

Reviewed by Heather on

3 of 5 stars

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Bill Bryson is really grumpy in this book.  I'm a big Bryson fan.  I think I've read everything he's written.  He's never veered far from curmudgeonly but he's downright peevish in this book.  He's telling people to fuck off repeatedly.  Far warning if that kind of thing bothers you.

To start this journey he drew a line on a map connecting the farthest points he could find on a map of the United Kingdom.

 







He started his trip from Bognor Regis in the south and meandered his way north in the general direction of this line.  This made me spend some quality time with Google maps.  I thought I had in my head a general idea of where he was going.  Then suddenly he was in Wales.  I didn't know which one of us was not understanding geography.  I did find that I didn't have a very good grasp on English geography - although I was spot on about Wales.  I would have sworn the Lake District was northeast of London along with Stratford-upon- Avon and the Cotswolds.  Turns out none of these things are true.

He alternates taking lovely walks with complaining about British customer service and the tendency of British people to litter.  He does have a strange nostalgia for museums full of taxidermy which I personally hate.  He can't stand shops selling pieces of wood with pithy sayings on them.  He seems to get a bit tipsy more than is probably healthy or wise.

There was more in this book about his life outside of writing than there has been in other books.  He talks about doing speeches to politicians and filming TV shows.

I was disappointed that he didn't narrate the audiobook.  That's one of the joys of listening to his books on audio.  The narrator did a good job but it took me several hours to get over the fact that he wasn't Bill Bryson and to stop hearing a phantom version of Bill Bryson's voice in my head reading along with the narrator.

Bottom line - Listen to this one if you are a fan but don't let this be a first or third Bryson book.

 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

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